I Am My Own Prison
by J-J-Sawyer-Phillips
Summary: "Your body shall be your tomb. Your mind? A prison constructed entirely of your regrets."


A/N: This chapter is rated a hard M for violence and gore. _**Please do not read**_ if you are sensitive to either of these. Sections in italics mimic the rhythm of certain common playground rhymes.

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He isn't quite sure how he got there, but Killian Jones comes to in a dark hallway. His first instinct is to check for weapons—sword, hook, and dagger secreted in his right boot all where he usually keeps them. The air is warm and moist and, along with the crushing blackness, reminds him of the jungles of Neverland. Far in the distance, a light flickers, giving him some sense of the immensity of the room. He waits patiently, hoping for another flash to at least guide him to a wall so he doesn't have to stumble about quite so blindly.

Almost as soon as the thought occurs to him, the flares increase in frequency and duration. Whatever is going on, someone wants him to head toward the source of the light. He draws his sword as quietly as possible, determined to meet his captors head on; oh, he may not be privy to all the trivial details, but he's beyond certain that somehow her glorious wickedness has managed to catch him in a snare.

The light source remains constant now, although it dims and sparks like candle-glow, yet also brighter somehow. A muffled litany starts up, cadences ebbing and flowing as of several people having multiple, subdued conversations all at the same time. He takes a bracing breath before slowly rounding the corner. He sees the oddest machine sitting in a room full of mirrors. Two large wheels sit atop a box, revolving quickly and making a clacking and whirring sound. For the moment, all he can see reflected in the mirrors is a field of white.

He sheathes his sword so that he can more closely examine the strange contraption. It rests on three thin, spindly legs, despite looking quite awkward and heavy. He moves around to the far side of the box and immediate recoils, blinded by the light it emits. Clearly this is the source of illumination, yet it does not account for the flickering. He runs his fingers along the sides of the box, noting the smooth, cool surface and the obvious metallic smell coming off of the thing.

"Wouldn't touch that if I were you, dearie." The mocking voice of the Crocodile echoes loudly in the room, and Killian can see his one-time foe's form and face on every wall. But his image is not quite right…distorted and drained of color. He recognizes that this device is somehow related to the magic box in David's apartment and the tiny bit of sorcery Emma calls her "smart phone."

"Now, now! Why waste Technicolor on the boring exposition? I can guarantee a…brighter change of pace once the real fun begins. After all… Wouldn't want you to get less than the full, visceral effect of every memorable detail!" The imp's skin retains the scaly texture he remembers from the day they dueled, but his movements and mouth move stiltedly, as if he's a marionette operated by strings. He moves closer to one of the mirrors and can see them tugging at Rumplestiltskin's jaw and limbs if he squints.

"What are these riddles and games?! Show yourself, demon!"

"Oooooh… I wouldn't be too sure of fixing such a morally absolute designation on little old moi, Hook. We're queuing up your greatest hits, so let's see how ethically superior a "man of honor" like yourself can be." The puppet Crocodile's mouth opens wide, and the image of his gaping maw grows until it consumes the whole screen and the mirror room is plunged in darkness.

He hears a terrible screeching—the gut-wrenching cries of a child awoken from one nightmare and into another. The loud slap of flesh against flesh is an aching, dull harmony to the screaming and the roaring of the great sea-beast come to devour them in the night. Only as soon as he's fully awake and he rubs the sleep from his eyes, the monster that has his Mam trapped in its jagged coils transforms into his Da. Harsh, angry words that he doesn't understand flow like venom from his father's mouth, as his fist meets her face once more.

Killian doesn't think—he acts—launching himself at the meaty arm as it swings downward again toward the cowering woman on the floor. He sinks his teeth into the leathery, mottled skin and draws blood. Da bellows fit to wake the dead in the kirkyard and summon drowned sailors from the sea as well. He manages to shake the young boy off, rattling out a tooth or two in the process and flinging him to the floor.

Dazed, it's only then that he notices his brother Liam must have tried the same trick and met a similar fate; except the older boy's arm looks purpled and sickly—a fair bit of blood stream down from where bone is sitting outside of his skin instead of in—and his mouth is the source of the shriek that awoke him. His Mam is sobbing, quietly attempting to shush both her boys and prevent Liam from being jostled while her husband continues to kick and strike her.

"_Momma's little baby can't stop her, stop her. Momma's little baby can't stop her death! Never could ya save her. No! She's just, she's just. Never could ya save her. No! She's just dead. Stupid little bleeder—what use are, use are? Stupid little bleeder—what use are you, use are you?_"

The shadowy hovel in a miserable port town gives way to the banshee howl of cannon-fire and the smoke of battle over the open water on a windless day. Killian huddles behind some barrels of gunpowder and the great leaden balls, his back tucked firmly against the mast. He's only nine years old, and this is the first time a life in the navy has seemed anything less than beautiful, honorable, and orderly.

Muskets crack with no sense of precision or method; sabers, grappling hooks, and javelins scratch the once glimmering wooden decks, scarring them and ringing like dull dread. Killian watches as a puddle of blood grows along the bit of plank in front of him, slowly crawling across like the shadow on a sun dial—imperceptibly until it's nowhere near where you last saw it. And the young cabin boy whimpers with his still twig-like arms wrapped around skinnier legs and holds the stare of a dead man until long after the battle had ended.

"_Cowards never prosper, no wonder that you lost her. Lashes, lashes, you're done for now!_ Oh, dearie dearie! You're just making this too much fun."

An argument that he's replayed in his mind a thousand and one times, but they all end the same way—with Liam driving poison straight into his veins. The scene goes on repeating itself, with Killian shouting himself hoarse; trapped inside his own body, unable to change the words and the doubt that lead his brother to so rashly prove his bloody loyalty to king and country. The elation of curing his captain, of righting the wrongs and standing up to their vice-ridden king have long since burned in the fires of his rage and taste like ash when he swallows them again.

Fighting is inevitable on a navy ship, but it's even more common when the vessel is commanded by pirates. Waves of blood and piss, of sweat and shit, slosh back and forth over the weather-worn deck. He fights with his crew, trusting them to have his back. That's when he sees her in the eddies of smoke and battle; the wench who has him by his balls is above deck despite his orders. She's untrained and clumsy, but she goes to the dirty work with relish. He's seen her wield a needle with a greater deal of skill, but no less ferocious grace. He never wanted her to have to bloody a sword in another man's gullet, but by the gods, he never imagined she'd so enjoy the carnage and destruction. Their fucking had been abandoned and degradingly satisfying that night—until he dreamt of legions of dead sailors dragging her to hell to pay for her crimes against them.

But then the smoke clears, and a scaled hand reaches into her chest. That fiery organ that brought them both so much passion and light and warmth is so very fragile when grasped in the fist of the man who hates her most in all the realms. Again, he's seen so many ways that this could have all turned out differently. Instead of catching her, he goes straight for the coward's throat; the Crocodile is quicker to crush her heart, and his back is the last sight she sees and not his face. He never hears her whispered "I love you." He begs to take her place, to die in her stead; the Dark One prolongs their torture, killing her by inches and letting rats gnaw through his wrist.

"_Pirate captain lost his wench, ee-eye-ee-eye-oh! Should have stol'n from someone else, spinner gets revenge! With a crushed heart here, and a crushed heart there! Spinner gets revenge! Then—so sad!—the Swan girl's next, next to die instead! With a sleeping curse here, and a death wish there! Pirate's loves are dead! _This next one's twoo-wy special… The best is yet to come now, dearie! Come on down, on Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!"

Seeing Emma cold and lifeless on a marble slab, surrounded by her grieving son and parents would be bad enough, but he sees the last thing he remembers, the last thing that bottle-green bitch had shown him in that gods-forsaken orb. His savior, his Swan is chained in a dank dungeon, hanging slumped and suspended from the ceiling. Her beautiful, golden curls have been shorn away so that she has nothing to hide behind. Her head is bowed, body sagging in exhaustion and defeat.

"Do it, my pretty!" The craven monkey, Rapunzel's precious prince sidles into the cell, clanging the barred door shut behind him. He carries a whip that slithers on the filthy stone before cracking through the air. Emma barely grunts, but her spine goes rigid and her head shoots up. Only shards of her eyes are visible, the skin around them purple and black. Her nose is clearly broken because the lower half of her face is covered in dried blood. She starts screaming the more that thing!—that traitorous whoreson, Walsh—strikes her with the lash. He's seen precisely what a bullwhip and the Cat can do to a man. He feels his voice crack and break along with hers, feels the sharp, icy sting as she must feel it on her soft skin. He loses track of time, but the pain becomes an unbearable agony when the perfidious winged primate starts in with the shrapnel-tipped flogger.

And above it all, the maddening cackle of the witch pierces the ear like a maelstrom's fury. But apparently no treachery is too low, no crime against the laws of nature and the rules of war goes unconsidered. Killian reaches for his hook and his dagger to gouge his eyes out when he watches, helpless, as the foul beast rips the clothes from Emma's body, releases her wrists from their chain, and with all the destructive capabilities of man and the primal instinct of an animal begins to ravish her from behind. Something inside him snaps at the fact that for an interminable amount of time her form remains entirely limp, as if all of the fight, all of the brilliant flame that is her spirit has been snuffed out. Her cries of anger or of torment would be music to his ears, so long as it meant she had not accepted defeat.

His rage had been fathomless before, but now a yawning, black abyss fills him. In all his years as a pirate, he'd never once countenanced the use of violence and sex against women. Destroying the sanctity of a person's body and then condemning them to live with that knowledge was the most ruthlessly punishable offenses on his ship. He could stomach the thought of his Swan _choosing_ another man over him, but this? Hook's weapons are nowhere to be found, so he takes his fists to the mirror in front of him, but the glass never shatters or cracks. The image is seared into his brain, so closing his eyes doesn't erase the sight. His ears can't un-hear her ragged screams, her desolate, wretched sobs that sound so much like the syllables that form his name. He pounds his knuckles into bloody hunks of meat and fractured bone, and then does the same with his head against the cold, unforgiving glass.

And throughout it all, a tiny voice keeps whispering, sibilantly slinking through his mind: _because she loved you, because she loved you, because she loved you, because she loved you._

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Killian bolts upright in bed, a haunted scream shattering his voice as tears stream down his cheeks. Emma curses under her breath because she only left the damn bed for a minute—the cottage isn't exactly weather-proofed by her standards and the fire had almost gone out. She drops the kindling safely into the very back of the fireplace before rushing over to his side. His skin is covered in sweat and ice-cold to the touch. She doesn't even flinch anymore, immediately straddling his thighs and wrapping her body around his.

One hand goes straight to his hair, pressing his face into the crook of her neck, and the other fumbles with wrapping them in the blankets. His arms clutch her to him so tightly she has trouble breathing; his stump rests on her hip while the fingers of his right hand travel a now familiar circuit all along her flanks and back before reaching up and gripping her shoulder above his forehead. Slowly, her warmth seeps into his chilled flesh and his tears slow down. His sobs come out in hiccoughs that she would find adorable if she weren't so concerned for his stability and so furious with the dead-and-buried spawn of Cora.

She counts the minutes, the seconds until he stops trembling, until his body registers that she's pliant and naked and alive in his arms. When he slowly uncurls his locked, numbed fingertips from her shoulder and ghosts his lips over the hollow of her throat, she commits the number to memory. In the morning, after she's imprinted a thousand and more words of love and reassurance into his skin, she'll write it down on a small notebook she keeps. Although it's been a month since they (temporarily) moved out of the palace so that only the two of them are disturbed by his night terrors, Emma plans on staying here for as long as it takes him to heal. Then she'll make a final tally of all those seconds, and even if she dies trying, she swears they'll make a new memory, a good moment to balance out all the bad.


End file.
